Forsyth's stalwart tribute to the spys who came in from the cold:
four ingenuous thriller-novellas featuring the intrigues of British
superagent Sam McCready. With the cold war over, the Foreign Office
has decided to retire its veteran spies, beginning with McCready,
the "deceiver" - head of Britain's disinformation desk since 1983.
McCready balks, demanding a hearing at which his assistant relates
four of McCready's most daring exploits. The first and longest,
"Pride and Extreme Prejudice," is at once the most suspenseful and
melancholic. Here, McCready, having "turned" a top Russian general,
sends spy-pal Bruno Morenz into East Germany to accept the
Russian's latest gift - the Soviet Army War Book; but, unknown to
McCready, Morenz has just killed a cheating mistress and is
cracking up. When the East Germans catch on to Morenz, who panics
into hiding, McCready must sneak across the Iron Curtain, find
Morenz, retrieve the book, and deal - irrevocably - with his
friend. Also subtly shaded with the grays of spydom is "The Price
of the Bride," in which McCready learns from a pro-West Soviet
source that the CIA's new prize, defecting KGB colonel Pyotr Orlov,
is actually a double agent bent on falsely implicating a top
CIA-man as a Soviet mole. It's a masterful spy-vs.-spy battle of
wits as McCready sets out to unmask the Russian and save the marked
Yank. Less enthralling but still offering solid action and
brilliant local color are the two final tales, with McCready acting
pivotal but minor roles as he displays his prowess against
non-Soviet threats. In "A Casualty of War," he foils an IRA-Qaddafi
gun-running scheme, while in the semihumorous "A Little Bit of
Sunshine," he foils a Cuban takeover of a Caribbean island. Not a
sizzler like The Day of the Jackal or even The Negotiator (1989)
but more resonant than either, with shades of le Carre and
Deighton: sophisticated, shrewd, roundly satisfying spy-stuff.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Sam McCready is The Deceiver, one of the Secret Intelligence
Service's most unorthodox and most valued operatives, a legend in
his own time. The end of the cold war has, however, strengthened
the hand of the Whitehall mandarins, to whom he seems about as
controllable as Genhis Khan, so Sam is to have his fate decided at
a special hearing. As part of the proceedings, four of Sam's key
operations are reviewed: a clandestine mission into East Germany in
1985 to contact the top Russian spy General Pankratin; the second
involving a KGB colonel who wants to defect - but is he genuine? An
audacious Qaddafi-inspired plot to ship arms to the IRA; and the
fourth when McCready presided over the aftermath of political
murder and mayhem in the Caribbean.
General
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